Richard Satchwell told gardaí the killing of his wife, Tina in 2017, was not calculated or premeditated.
Mr Satchwell has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Tina Satchwell in March 2017. Her body was found six-and-half years later buried under the stairs in their home.
He told gardaí he could not remember the details of how she died because it all happened in a flash. He said he was panicking, and although he said he should have gone to the garda station and told them what he had done, he said he could not take that back now.
The jury in Mr Satchwell’s trial watched video recording of interviews carried out by gardaí with him after his wife’s remains were found.
Up until the discovery of Tina Satchwell’s body, Mr Satchwell had repeatedly told gardaí and media interviewers that he came home on Monday 20 March, 2017 to find her gone, along with €26,000 in savings.
However, once the remains had been discovered, the court heard his narrative changed.
'Physically perfect'
Mr Satchwell described his wife as "physically perfect". He said she was five foot five inches in height and a size 10/12 in clothes.
He gave her waist size, leg length, shoe and bust size to Detective Sergeant, David Noonan.
He told Sergeant Noonan that on the morning in question, his wife was trying to attack him with a chisel. He said he fell backwards and was trying to hold her off with the belt of her dressing gown when she suddenly went limp.
He said that afterwards he lay on the ground with Tina’s body. He described cutting the dressing gown belt which he said had fallen down around her arm, with a nail scissors, so he could put her arm around him.
Asked why he had not described any attempts to revive her - he said he was numb and he was not thinking. He said his brain was numb, and his body was numb and her body was stone cold.
Sergeant Noonan asked Mr Satchwell what he thought his wife’s cause of death would be.
He said he believed the weight of her and him fighting her off was too much for her throat and he thought it "blocked her breathways or something".
Detective Sergeant Noonan said what he had said did not make sense and repeatedly asked him for details on how exactly Ms Satchwell died.
He told Mr Satchwell that he had given him so much specific detail from the day before, and was able to recount specific details on the following day, but he was excluding the most significant thing. He said there was no logical or reasonable reason that he would do that other than there was something else to hide.
'Life fell apart in ten seconds'
Mr Satchwell said he too would like to understand 100% and to know why his "life fell apart in ten seconds". He said he defended himself and that at a certain point he was not looking at Tina’s face or her clothes but at a chisel.
He told Sergeant Noonan he put his hands up to doing the crime and was not looking for sympathy. He was asked if holding the belt at Tina’s neck caused her death. He replied he could not say for certain, but he thought it did.
He said during the incident he was afraid and full of fear. Afterwards his arms were weak and numb.
Mr Satchwell said he was sick of living behind a mask. He said he had nothing to gain by lying and nothing to lose by telling the truth. He said he would be going to prison and there would be no jury as he was going to plead guilty. Even if he was advised to let it go to trial and try for a lesser charge, he would not. He said this was because he had kept the secret of Tina’s violence for 36 years and was not going to have it dragged out in a court of law where "every Tom, Dick and Harry" could listen to it.
Mr Satchwell said he had come in that morning and put his hands up and told them: "I’m the reason she’s no longer with us."
He said it was a flash, but it did not excuse it. Detective Sergeant Noonan reminded Mr Satchwell that he had been arrested and had lied to them until his wife’s body was found, but Mr Satchwell said he had intended to ring gardaí and there had been no need to arrest him.
Mr Satchwell said he had initially placed his wife’s body in a disused freezer in the shed, before digging the hole under the stairs. He gave the freezer away on the website Donedeal a week or two later.
Mr Satchwell said burying Tina was like the "final goodbye, like at a funeral". He said because he was the "doer", it was a lot harder. He said it was a lot harder when "you’re the reason the person is lying there". He said he would talk to her just like when you go to a graveyard and talk to your loved ones.
He said he did not drop his wife’s body into the hole he had dug under the stairs, although he could not remember 100% of the details. He said he did his best and wanted to make her comfortable.
Later he told gardaí that he had a vision of having positioned her in the hole in a sleeping position. He said the fact that he had been told her body was found "pretty well preserved" meant he did "kind of make her comfortable" which was his intention.
Quality of life was non existent
In the years afterwards, he said he put on a persona of someone who was working and happy doing his job. But he said at home he had no motivation and his quality of life was non existent. He said he was sitting on a couch with "mouldy dog shit" on it and there were dog faeces on the floors. He had not changed the bed for a couple of years, and was living the life of a homeless person with a roof over his head.
He said he had extended the kitchen during this time - "to make it bigger for Tina". He told detective garda, Noelle McSweeney that he had done all the work on the house himself and agreed this took a considerable amount of effort and strength.
He told gardaí that during a lengthy interview with Sergeant Noonan in 2021, he had "opened up 100%" about some things including child abuse in Ms Satchwell’s family even though he had told her he would not tell anyone. When he got home from that interview he said he opened the door leading into the area under the stairs, and sat down to apologise to Tina.
Mr Satchwell told gardaí that not everything he told them was lies, although a lot was. Garda McSweeney said it seemed he was being selective with what he remembered.
She asked him why he had not tried to take the chisel from Ms Satchwell on the morning of 20 March even though he was a strong 6 foot 2 man. He said he was holding her up and couldn’t. He said a small person could be stronger than a big man and he had not been expecting his wife to lurch at him.
Garda McSweeney said a doctor he had named had no record of seeing him at a time he claimed he had tried to take his own life because of Tina’s violence against him. Mr Satchwell said there were people who had seen bruises and stuff on him and up until the day his wife died, he had never even defended himself against her.
He said he was panicking and he said he should have come straight out to the garda barracks and said, "lads, I done this", and put his hands up. But he said, he did not, and he could not take that back now. He said "it started with a lie and the lie escalated". He said it was his shame.
Garda McSweeney suggested to Mr Satchwell that there was 1 hour and 37 minutes where he had managed to kill Tina, come up with an alibi and create a cover up. She said that did not suggest the actions of a panicking man.
Mr Satchwell said there was no premeditation. If there had been he said there were thousands of country lanes he and Tina used to walk down where he could have buried her.
He said he was not trying to cover up or embellish. He had never been a violent man or even hit a man in his life.
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